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H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Veteran violation chasers Shane Coughlan and Armijn Hemel have summarized how license violations are caused in the consumer electronics market under time-to-market pressure and thin profit margins: 'This problem is compounded when one board with a problem appears in devices supplied to a number of western companies. A host of violation reports spanning a dozen European and American businesses may eventually point towards a single mistake during development at an Asian supplier.' They also discuss the helpful organizations which have sprung up and the documents and procedures now available."

By the way, the players probably use the FFmpeg codecs and not mplayer itself, which lacks any real kind of gui. Speaking of which the FFmpeg codecs are themselves currently sitting under the Damocles sword of intellectual property in the for of the multitude of video codec patents. I doubt there's a single 30 line block of code in there that isn't violating someones patent.

In conclusion, our current IP regime sucks. I for one applaud these hardware makers, particularly in Asia, for cutting this twisted Gordian knot and just loading up their devices will all the features they can download. In my opinion as producers of real tangible goods, they are morally, socially and economically justified in what they have done. If anyone wants to complain, they can just go ahead and make their own, real physical devices and bring them to market.

That's only a problem if you live in one of the tiny minority of countries that recognise software patents. Most countries however recognise copyrights in one form or another, though they differ in when the copyrights expire.

That's only a problem if you live in one of the tiny minority of countries that recognise software patents.

Most major motion picture studios are headquartered in one of those countries. Yes, copyright != patent, but imagine the MPAA bankrolling MPEG-LA's crackdown on makers of DVD players that bend or break the standard licensing terms.

Ah, but that would be counterproductive as it would cut down the number of players out there that people are buying legitimate DVDs to play in them. The MPAA doesn't care what player you use to play their movies, just that the movies are purchased from them. What would be their (financial) motivation for cracking down on DVD player hardware?

Different pricing in different regions. In some countries, they can get away with charging a lot more, so they do. If imports weren't prevented from playing through the use of region-coding, people in those countries could just import a cheaper version of the same DVD.

Region codes don't have anything to do with honoring or not honoring intellectual property of DVD content producers. They are technological measures designed to segment the market so that producers can price discriminate more easily. The only reason they would be related to copyright law is because they can also be construed as a copy protection measure, and circumventing that is a violation of the DMCA. As everyone around here should know, it's entirely possible to violate the DMCA without actually infringing copyrights.

If region-free DVD players are illegal, it would only be because the manufacturers of such players signed on to the DVD spec and didn't abide by it, or because they never signed on to the spec in the first place and are perhaps infringing on patents that the DVD Forum allows its members to use. That's a problem for the DVD Forum and its rivals to sort out, and doesn't really have to do with the content on the DVD so much as the licensing agreement surrounding the DVD spec.

Region codes don't have anything to do with honoring or not honoring intellectual property of DVD content producers. They are technological measures designed to segment the market so that producers can price discriminate more easily. The only reason they would be related to copyright law is because they can also be construed as a copy protection measure, and circumventing that is a violation of the DMCA. As everyone around here should know, it's entirely possible to violate the DMCA without actually infringing copyrights.

If region-free DVD players are illegal, it would only be because the manufacturers of such players signed on to the DVD spec and didn't abide by it, or because they never signed on to the spec in the first place and are perhaps infringing on patents that the DVD Forum allows its members to use. That's a problem for the DVD Forum and its rivals to sort out, and doesn't really have to do with the content on the DVD so much as the licensing agreement surrounding the DVD spec.

The whole thing with region-coding is laughable anyway. Region coding was found to be illegal under Australian anti-competition laws yet every major electronics chain still stocks dozens of infringing units from Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc. al. And just about every DVD sold here is region encoded.

The authorities have not brought a single case against any of the multinationals.

Yet another data-point that shows so called "Intellectual Property" laws are about one thing and one thing alone: protecting the interests of large corporations over those of both the producers and the consumers of content.

Yes. Socially laudable. However, they're big business that will use exactly the laws they're ignoring to ride someone else into the ground when it suits them.Should Copyright and Patent law become sane (i.e. all this becomes legal), then they lose a lot of the 'rights' under law that they currently want to keep.Interestingly, what DVD players don't honour the intellectual property of content holders? Again, the content providers are playing dirty; they use labour from a worldwide market, yet arbitrarily

Many of the chipset SDK suppliers don't tell their customers of their obligations to provide the source when requested by a customer.So while the hardware manufacturer might be at fault, its the chipset maker who is more often the failure.

Cisco/Linksys using Broadcom chipsets. Did Broadcom tell them about using Linux & their obligation under the GPL to release the code.Humax with their PVR - now they're less reliant on the chipset as the Cisco situation so are more at fault for not releasing the code when asked.

Suppose I am computer vendor C. I purchase motherboards from manufacturer B, who uses a network chip from manufacturer A. With the chip, company A provides a SDK that uses some open source. Company B uses that in creating their BIOS and device drivers. I use that device driver in the setup program that I supply with my computer.

Now, why should I provide any sources? The code I write is proprietary. Certainly the code that company A used and m

To protect its IP, the CE company that I work for does not allow the use of GPL or LGPL code in production software. It's a good thing that Linux system calls are excepted from the normal GPL rules, otherwise we wouldn't have seen its massive success in embedded devices.

What the GP probably refers to is that the Linux copyright file does state that normal use of Linux system calls does not create a derivative work per copyright law. That's more in line with a clarification than an exemption - in that Richard Stallman would agree with it.

(If there are exemptions from 'Normal GPL rules' in Linux, it's in the nature of the allowances the kernel devs have for nonGPled kernel modules, such as the ATI/Nvidia blobs, where it's all a big legal can of worms as to what i

It's a good thing that Linux system calls are excepted from the normal GPL rules, otherwise we wouldn't have seen its massive success in embedded devices.

Could you elaborate on the "normal GPL rules" regarding syscalls? Because I'm not seeing why any exception would be needed. Has this been hashed out somewhere before?

(My thinking is: yes, user code can call kernel functions through a binary interface, which is similar to linking, but it's not *really* linked to the kernel; the same binary program could run on a BSD kernel too. I fail to see how syscalls would be any different than a GPL and non-GPL program communicating through SysV IPC shared memory.

Look, it's perfectly simple. If you compile in headers, then by the plain language of the license, you've created a derivative work. Any suggestion that you haven't done so is extrinsic to the license.

A license does not decide whether a work is derivative; copyright law does. "Compiling in" a header file is also vague. If all the header file does it to declare an interface, it is difficult to "compile in" any code to derive from. Unless one wants that adhering to an interface is equal to creating derivative work. Then, presuably, one finds a good friend in Darl McBride et al, and supports the notion that Linux is a derivative work of Unix.

Fair point about derivative works, but that's still extrinsic to the license, and you'd have to pay a lawyer to prove it. Ask IBM.

"Compiling in" is not vague at all though, at least in the context of a C/C++ compiler. "Header files" have no meaning to the compiler - it's all just source, regardless of which top level module caused it to be included verbatim. [citation [strlen.com]]

"Compiling in" is not vague at all though, at least in the context of a C/C++ compiler. "Header files" have no meaning to the compiler - it's all just source, regardless of which top level module caused it to be included verbatim.

Right, but does a header file containing only constant declaration and forward declarations constitute "compiling in"? E.g. "extern int strlen(char * str);" vs "int strlen(char * str) {... function code... }". The latter case is clearly "compiled in", as in two modules including a header file that contained the implementation would each put the implementation in their respective.o/.obj file, which would (usually) cause the link to fail due to duplicate functions. However, the former case to me is NOT

It depends a lot on the contents of the header. If all that the header does is define an interface, then it can not be copyrighted (in the USA). You can, however, copyright an expression of an interface. This is where it gets muddy. If the header contains macros and static / inline functions that are included into the final product, then it can be classed as a derived work (but it might not be). If you are using a language like C++, which puts a lot of the implementation detail into the headers, then i

No. Because even if there was some country out there that thought that, say, every program running on Windows was technically part of Windows and therefore owned by Microsoft (and there isn't!), the clarification in the Linux copyright file suddenly becomes an exemption (since it clearly shows the intent of the authors) and the Linux devs would be estopped from suing people who took them at their word.

Who said anything about licenses? We were talking about derivative works in copyright law. If the law is ridiculous enough that that using OS functions constitutes being a derivative work, nothing in the license can change that (although you might get permission from the copyright holder to use "his derivative work", ie, the programs you wrote for his OS).

Besides, Linus' comment in the copyright file does not necessarily have legal value

You wouldn't get sued for shipping Linux and non-GPLing the applications.

You could, however, get sued for distributing software in the US that was perfectly legal in most of Europe. You could also get arrested in the US for doing something in another country that was perfectly legal there (*cough*Sklyarov*cough*).

Interesting. So, if I want to circumvent the GPL on a library, I only have to create a binary interface layer on top of the library and use that layer? The layer itself of course would be GPL.

Depending on how exactly you do it, maybe. There are a lot of specific details that would factor into it, and I don't know enough about the GPL and copyright law to give an informed opinion. At the very least, though, you wouldn't be able to distribute the GPL library with your code, so the end user would have to install it themselves. I've seen this done in a few cases with software that was written to use MySQL, though I'm not certain if it fully complies with the GPL or not.

Interesting. So, if I want to circumvent the GPL on a library, I only have to create a binary interface layer on top of the library and use that layer? The layer itself of course would be GPL.

There are all sorts of ways to "circumvent" GPL on a library. One of the easiest is to expose the library functions as a separate command-line program and manipulate that through a pty interface. What you're talking about wouldn't work if your in-between layer was GPL, but if it was BSD it *might* work - that's still under debate and probably won't be known unless case law makes a precedent - but it is the way the nVidia and ATI drivers are packaged.

So, if I want to circumvent the GPL on a library, I only have to create a binary interface layer on top of the library and use that layer?

Only if the GPL code and GPL-incompatible code run in separate processes, and any communication between the two processes uses a well-documented protocol with low coupling so that others can replace the GPL-incompatible process with free software.

the last 2 places I've worked at we've used it all the time - we're careful about how we partition code and we publish source when required and we blow patches back to the various projects if it makes sense for them (after all we win in the end).

It's not hard to comply if you build it in to your planning from the start

It has nothing to do with deadlines or politics or competition or margins.

The code they are using is seen as "some free stuff I downloaded which happens to work - cool for me".

The point of a company is to make money, not to further ethical causes. If it doesn't SEEM like a massive no-no I don't think it would enter the head of even one person in this supply chain to question it. And by the time anyone does, its already 3 generations of products

There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.

I also don't believe for a second that linux would have got where it is today, with multiple big-name companies supporting it and contributing to it if they had not been forced to reopen their changes.

Thirdly, lots of people don't like the idea of contributing to a project which can then be swept up and used by commercial entities without them being made to have the courtesy to contribute back.

At this point BSD is basically an also-ran. Great project, great OS I'm sure, but not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software. At least a some of this is down to the environment created by the differing licenses.

I have ALL OSs installed because I need to port software to ALL OSs.This means Linux, Mac, WindowsXP/64/03/08, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc. etc.

There is nothing huge to distinguish any of these systems from each other.

They are ALL crap in their own way.

The only difference is in their Pundits: Linux people think that areknights of some kind of OS crusade. They don't know it, but theyare marketing people employed by RedHat and IBM - employedWITHOUT PAY that is.

I don't know about an also ran. Our entire infrastructure is BSD based from the routers (Juniper) to our web servers (FreeBSD) to the database servers running PostgreSQL (FreeBSD & OpenBSD). We're now working on an embedded low powered version of one of our products and testing both NetBSD and FreeBSD depending on whether the final product is ARM or x86 based. And we're doing that expressly because license compliance vs. GPL is something we just don't have to worry about. Given the number of other t

"In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.

I love the smell of freedom, don't you?"

Where do you get this steaming bullshit?

Everyone is equal under the GPL, equally bound to give out the source for any binaries they distribute. If you want to s

Why don't they use *BSD code then ? And it's not YOUR principle, it's the principle written in the licence. So again, why don't they use *BSD code ? Surely the only sensible answer is that they don't even read the licence. they don't care. Yet if it's their code that gets reused there is usually hell to pay.

FreeBSD benefits enormously from user contributions (both commercial and hobbiest), yet has no requirement to make changes public.

This is basically the difference between a nonprofit and a business. FreeBSD asks for charity and sometimes companies give them code, because it gets them goodwill and is occasionally beneficial for the companies to make sure others have what they're giving away.

The GPL is not a charity. They offer code in exchange for the promise of other code. If you want to use their code, you have to pay by releasing any changes.

So by analogy, your argument boils down to a belief that people will give to charity, so the

In other words, the BSD is a vastly morally superior license, and of the two, is a far more pure manifestation of the older hacker gift culture.

People have morals; licenses do not. Picking a license is usually not a moral or ethical choice, it's a business decision. Is it always morally superior to give without asking something in return? I say no. For example, is giving poison to children more moral than giving them $100 in exchange for a promise to read an educational book?

Generally the people picking a license these days are businesses, who do most OSS development. A large number of these companies use multiple licenses. For example, if you're c

Is it morally superior to just give money away to whoever asks or to put it towards something that will definitely continue to do the public good, ensuring that those that gain advantage from it also help?

Is it morally superior to just give money away to whoever asks or to put it towards something that will definitely continue to do the public good, ensuring that those that gain advantage from it also help?

This is the FSF's standard rhetoric for justifying copyleft, to which I will give my own standard response. The enforcement of reciprocity is motivated by anti-corporate hate, fear, and paranoia. These are not emotions which form a sound basis for anything positive.

If you doubt that these emotions dictate almost all of the FSF's behaviour, all you really need to do is look around. Said emotions are blatantly obvious in virtually everything the organisation does.

The point of a company is to make money, not to further ethical causes.

Companies are bound by the rule of law. That's why GE doesn't have a division responsible for selling crack despite the high profitability of that market.

The reason why they "violate" is because they just do not care.

There's an easy way to make the companies care about OSS license violations: the C&D letter (followed by the appropriate legal action if they don't comply). It's been held up in the cases where it's gone to court. The FSF has a portion of their organization devoted to doing just that sort of wrangling.

Ultimately, you need to also ask if it really matters at all. How often do you think this provided source code is really going to be useful to a mass audience?

BSD is where it is BECAUSE of GNU, Linux and the GPL. It's called "Riding the Coat Tails".
First look at all of the GNU tools which make up BSD. Right there that should tell you that you've got a big blindspot in your argument. BSD is not BSD without GPL.

Now consider this, BSD is also getting a huge boost from the fact that it's so easy to port software from Linux. How much software is written for BSD and then ported to Linux? None. How much software is written for Linux then ported to BSD? All of it.

BSD is where it is BECAUSE of GNU, Linux and the GPL. It's called "Riding the Coat Tails". First look at all of the GNU tools which make up BSD.

FreeBSD uses gcc, binutils, grep, tar, and maybe sed. That's it. Everything else in terms of both the core toolchain and textutils is their own version, and BSD versions of utilities required by the Single UNIX Specification are still maintained, that there are no GNU equivalents of. BSD also has its' own internal make; pmake with FreeBSD, and bmake for NetBSD/pkgsrc.

FreeBSD also actually uses the most GNU stuff. NetBSD has its' own port of tar, and OpenBSD has its' own ports of sed and grep. Porting O

...that those companies usually did not intend to break the license in a bad way. After all there's next to no cost in doing it the right way.

So please contact them in a friendly way, and remind them that the rules to get this software for free, is that you have to continue letting others getting it for free. In case of the GPL, even if you modified it. If they don't want that, which is also OK, they have to use another, possibly commercial, product. Or perhaps BSD (which, when you look at Windows, works also well).But remind them, that the reason they can actually get it free, is that others gave their code away for free. If everybody would do it like them, and not give away the code, then nobody, including themselves, could get any free software anymore.

Only if they then ignore you, and deliberately continue to do it, sue the hell outta them with no mercy whatsoever.

Sun Tzu already recommended this strategy in the 6th century BC, in his book "The Art Of War [wikipedia.org]".

For years Harald Welte has been the only serious chaser [gpl-violations.org] I know of. These two have been keeping their work a secret, I guess. More power to them if they're actually tracking down GPL violators, whoever they are. This task is thankless and unappreciated. Most authors can't be bothered.

Every western company has to step carefully around the Chinese market. If you're working on a proprietary product, you NEVER license source over there. If a Chinese company decides to rip you off, you've got no recourse.

When you sell software in China, no matter what type, you can only sell a single seat license-- they will break your protection and run it on a hundred.

China's government protects its companies from fair business practices, anyway. Many of the malicious hacks that come from the Chinese government are purely economical- just stealing plans, prototypes, and source code from prominent western businesses.

So, good luck, guys. If these big powerful multinational companies can't get China to pay for what they do to our IP market, I'm not sure what you GPL folks can do. They will say anything they need to say to avoid respecting your license.

If I contract Company X to provide me with component Y, and I go about my business, all is fine. If Company X stole Y from a third party Z, Z sues myself and X. In all likelihood, some degree of damages gets awarded (ignoring that if Z is small, we simply run out their legal budget and then sue them for a frivolous case), and X has to pay for their damages, and I have to pay. Very rarely will an injunction be issued to stop me from doing business, as the courts will assume that compensation will work. I

Now for something serious.Piracy is the crime of hijacking ships at sea. This happens frequently off the coast of Somalia, and infrequently in the Caribbean and south-east Asia.Theft is the crime of removing something from another without permission/compensation. They key is that the property is removed from its owner or the service of the provider is consumed without agreed recompense.

They do, and that meaning is established by the use of words by native language speakers, and is documented in dictionaries. So go check your dictionary for a definition of "piracy".

"Piracy" in the meaning of "copyright infringement" has been in English language for the last 300 years. You may not like it, and you may believe that the original addition was politicized, but nonetheless it is an established meaning of the word as understood by virtually every English speaker today.

Woohoo.. I love doing stuff that is bad for me, it's the best kind of stuff.

Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?

Uhhh.. because its being used for different purposes? Why are automatic weapons a good thing in armed resistance to tyranny but a bad thing in shopping mall shootings? Are you so seriously retarded that you can't tell the difference between a goal and the tools used to achieve that goal?

I am assuming that you use "software industry" where you mean "Closed Source Software" as the software industry includes a lot of OSS software and even companies.

In my view the software industry should start lobbying individual countries to declare OSS invalid and fair game for incorporation into any product.

If that works two ways, then I am with you. If OSS can use the software protected under licences of Closed SOurce, it would be great. It would mean that there is NO copyright on software. Not from the industry and not from the OSS front.

Otherwise you are a hypocrite for doing the "I am against the use of this tool but I find it useful and so can use it in my fight" reasoning.

I could easily say:In my view the OSS community should start lobbying individual countries to declare Closed Source invalid and fair game for incorporation into any product. See, it works both ways.

The only difference is however that OSS asks to have the source open and CSS asks to have the source, well, closed. I rather have the second then the first.

With Closed Source, everybody stands on the bottom of the pool and everybody drowns. With Open Source, you can stand on the shoulder of giants.

But very few people on slashdot have ever argued in favor of the abolishment of copyright. copyright reform which eliminates abuses and shortens terms, sure, but if you want arguments for abolishment,/. will see more of that directed at particular forms of patent law (which can also be considered "patent reform", as it wouldn't usually abolish the whole system)

And rather than saying "the ends justify the means", we're saying "the means aren't in question, the means are neutral. We're talking about the ends

Come on, bonch. You are either hopelessly confused or an intentional troll.

Copyright infringement is that, copyright infringement and *not theft*. It is still an infringement -- whether it concerns a work put under the GPL or the newest song by the Spice Girls.

No sensible person here is contending that. It's just this meme of "intellectual property" which we are contending. Copyright, trademark and patents are basically fine (although not as they are now. Especially: copyright terms are too long, patents shouldn't apply to software, maths or business methods, yadda, yadda).

(I am able to imagine a society without copyrights, patents and even trademarks: we wouldn't need the GPL there. But that is open to lots of debate, I know).Clear now?

"No sensible person here is contending that. It's just this meme of "intellectual property" which we are contending. Copyright, trademark and patents are basically fine (although not as they are now. Especially: copyright terms are too long, patents shouldn't apply to software, maths or business methods, yadda, yadda)."

Well the point I think that's being made is that if the tool is the same in either case and it's just who wields it that's the difference? Then copyright debates on slashdot should be focusin

"Creation costs" as you so speciously put it, are already monetized by the time the product hits the shelves. Further, if I've bought a copy of a movie, I've already paid my little share of the.01 % of the sticker price that goes to "creation costs" and if I want to sell that DVD or share it on a file sharing site it does not make me a "shameless pirate" any

This specious argument has been bandied around by shameless pirates for a long time and it's simply not true.

At least in the UK, the courts have held a clear difference; in the case of Oxford v Moss [wikipedia.org], the courts ruled that under the 1968 theft act information is not necessarily intangible[sic] property, and therefor cannot be stolen.

Slashdot isn't in favour of or against anything. It's a whole bunch of different people with different opinions. Although I suspect quite a lot of us agree that it's clueless to mistake the opinions of individual posters for the opinion of/. as a whole.

"slashdot" is not against the proliferation of open source code.Feel free to download, modify and spread any GPL licensed source (we on slashdot would like to do the same with music and film).

Copyright is not a goal in GPL.It is a tool, to preserve the freedom of being able to modify and distribute the modified versions of the code.It is really amazing some people still cannot comprehend this simple thing.

Free software licenses? You mean copyright licenses like the GPL, which the FSF website says "assures the copyright over the software?" I thought Slashdot was opposed to copyright law and that you couldn't "steal" intellectual property because it wasn't physically taken from someone else? Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?

Very easy. In proprietary cases I benefit nothing from it. In FOSS cases I do benefit from it, in terms of me being a part of the public and that something was taken from the public. What? Are you going to point at me for not fighting other peoples battles? No? Didn't think so.

Even if you are opposed to copyright, using "copyrights" to weaken copyright (by making it impossible for someone else to close the source) is not incompatible with that goal. Further, most here aren't against any form of copyright, but do believe that it has grown far out of control in scope, term, and enforcement. I don't think we'd be having this conversation, or that you'd even have any need to trot out this same old troll you do every time an open source license comes up, if copyright were a 5-10 year

Slashdot isn't just one guy sitting in his basement posting all these comment, it's many people with many opinions, some of which differ from those of others. I would think someone with a 5-digit UID would have noticed that by now

Wanting reforms to copyright law to ensure fair use and the Public Domain are given as much respect and consideration as the needs of copyright holders is not the same thing as being "opposed to copyri

This is precisely what can happen when a western company outsources "engineering" work to countries with little or no respect of copyright or intellectual property.

You imply that western countries respect copyright or intellectual property.

Perhaps instead of blaming countries or cultures it could be simply be that companies dont have a reason to obey open source copyright until they are forced too.

If a company gets caught violating open source licenses the community is very willing to accept it was an accident, even blind ignorance is easily forgiven.

When a company is caught violating open source licenses it just means they have to pay for a lawyer to explain their rights and obligations to them, something they would have had to do anyway... so there is a chance that violating open source licenses will save the company money.

Until violators (and people like Darl McBride) are treated as severely as RIAA defendants then nothing will change, these people need to face bankruptcy or jail, there should not be a profit motive to destroy a public asset (which is what open source is).

Punt the whole idea of OSS to the curb and go with closed sources solutions.

But hang on, if they don't care about violating licences, then what happens when they do this with a closed source solution? I think a commercial company is far more likely to be aggressive at pursuing a lawsuit, than open source authors.

and not worry that some program was mis-licensed somewhere in the chain.

How does this follow? Are open source authors more likely to mis-licence? This is especially a surprising claim, when we're t